Political Quotes

“``cancel culture''--we hear that in the news a lot these days--the idea that we all need safe spaces from mean words, trigger warnings on op-eds, or TV shows that might constitute a microaggression. This is the language of the campus social justice seminar, but increasingly it is the language of our workplace and our culture. We saw an instance of it just last week at the New York Times. I published an op-ed there that said simply, while we respect peaceful protesters, we can have zero tolerance for looting and rioting, and if the police are overwhelmed or outnumbered, the National Guard and, if necessary, Federal troops have to restore order. It has gotten support from a large majority of Americans, if you believe the polls. The New York Times published it. The editorial page editor defended it publicly. The publisher defended the decision publicly. But a woke-child mob at the New York Times rose up and demanded heads on pikes. They demanded that the op-ed be taken down. They demanded that the grownups--maybe I should say the supposed grownups--who run the New York Times apologize, and that is exactly what happened. In what could only be called a struggle session from the Cultural Revolution, in the greatest traditions of Mao, the publisher of the New York Times fired the editorial page editor, and he reassigned the deputy editorial page editor.…”